Re: Colours

Laurie Gerholz wrote:

>You may want to add the third dimension of color description that we
>humans use. You have the first two: hue and value. Hue is the point on
>the visual spectrum, and value is the lightness (towards white) or
>darkness (towards black) of a color.
>
>The third dimension is saturation. This describes how bright or grayed a
>color is. The full spectrum hues are the maximal saturation for each
>color. The monochromatic scale of grays from white to black marks no
>saturation. Think of the difference, say, between bright lemon yellow
>and a light golden tan. They are both of yellow hue, and are of the same
>value. But the tan is much less saturated (i.e. more gray) than the
>lemon yellow.
Thanks for the idea. I knew there was something missing! I'm adding
the saturation dimension to the language soon. It's going to be
a very comprehensive descriptive language indeed. I'm also including
a closed class of adjectives to indicate physical properties such as
shape, size, length, etc.

>Looking forward to seeing further work on this idea.
You can have some now: some colours, more or less the way an average
speaker could name them.

_nUsU baO lon[_ "red"
_cebe ba tete_  "orange"

where uppercase <U> and <O> are unrounded u and o, and the square
bracket <[> indicates retroflexion.

_nUsU baO tete_ could be translated:
 _nUsU baO_  "(infra)red end"
 _lon[_      "not so much"


_cebe ba tete_:
 _cebe_   "centre of the spectrum" (yellowish green)
 _ba_     "shift towards the red end"
 _tete_   "even more"

Now, "orange" could also be _nUsU baO to[ kO_
("infrared end, shift towards violet, more than a bit").

Evidently this is not going to be a concise language -- these aliens
go for detail.
There are also going to be some imperative "verbs" to indicate the
hearer that she has to move her visual window a bit in order to see
the colour described... Probably the "default" window will cover the
colours between red-orange and near UV.


--Pablo Flores

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